Yes, Gay Animals Exist

Did you know that over 450 animal species exhibit homosexual behavior? Did you also know that none of them experience discrimination from their species due to their homosexual behavior?

Yet only in our species, homo sapiens, exists the monstrous and vile issue of homophobia.

This discrimination is completely unnecessary, because homosexuality and bisexuality are actually found in nature.

• The bonobo is an African ape closely related to our species; 75% of its sexual relations are with the same sex. Another interesting fact about their species comes from Frans de Waal, author of a book about this species titled Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape, who believes that the species often have sex to resolve conflict between themselves.
• The Laysan albatross is a seabird species which assembles every fall to incubate eggs. These birds meet with the same partner from the previous year, every year. Lindsay C. Young, a biologist who studied these birds for her doctoral dissertation at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, expressed that a third of the pairs from the study was actually a female-female pair. An intriguing fact about these birds is that they often stay together for a lifetime.
• Japanese macaques (monkeys) also exhibit homosexual behavior as during the mating season, not only do male macaques have to fight to get a chance to mate with the female, but so do female macaques. Mating aside, females often take care of each other, during their week-long relationship, by grooming and protecting each other.
• In the bottlenose species of dolphins, both male and females portray homosexual behavior. They use it to create social bonds in their group. In the end though, in order to have offspring, male dolphins find a female companion.
• Some domestic sheep also exhibit homosexual behavior, but unlike the species listed above, they do not seek for a female companion in order to have offspring. Around 8% of sheep in a flock will be homosexual; male sheep will only seek male sheep during their lifetime.

While these animals are labeled as homosexual, most of them (excluding the 8% of domestic sheep) will return to the opposite sex to produce offspring, making them more bisexual than homosexual. The animals listed above use same-sex sex as a way to pleasure themselves or even to build stronger social bonds within their group. Stephen Fry, a British comedian and activist once said, “At least 260 species of animal have been noted exhibiting homosexual behavior but only one species of animal ever, so far as we know, has exhibited homophobic behavior — and that’s the human being.”